Disability Matters

Our Employment Law team’s Disability Matters Campaign aims to stamp out disability discrimination in the workplace. This campaign will concentrate on mental health issues including depression and anxiety. It follows on from our September 2024 event ‘Dawn Of Hope’ to raise awareness around suicide and to raise funds for Grassroots Suicide Prevention.

Disability at work – the numbers

Despite disability discrimination in the workplace being outlawed we are dealing with increasing numbers of employees experiencing discrimination. A House of Commons report from March 2024 reported that over ten million working age people reported having a disability, which is nearly a quarter of the working age population, and an increase of over 450,000 from the year before.

The study found that 54.2% of working-age disabled people are in employment, compared to 82% for people who are not disabled. The number of people with a mental health condition as their main disability has increased by 1.2million over the past ten years. The increase is even greater among people with depression, bad nerves or anxiety, with an increase of 112.6% since 2014.

A 2020 study carried out by Citizens Advice found that disabled people were twice as likely to face redundancy at work. The Office of National Statistics (ONS) also found that disabled people earn 13.8% less on average than non-disabled people – almost £2 less per hour. The disability employment gap, which shows the difference between the employment rates of disabled and non-disabled people, has narrowed slightly since the Covid pandemic, but remains at 27.9%.